Draft Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 General Committees

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I am forced to agree with the hon. Member for Orpington—it does not come easily—about the Reform party spokesperson. He was not just a junior member of the Reform party but its official housing spokesperson, and his commentary on the Grenfell disaster and on the measures—for which there is cross-party support across the House—that must necessarily be taken to improve building regulation—

[The Chair]

Order. I am not sure how relevant that is.

[Gideon Amos]

It is relevant because the regulations address the Grenfell tragedy. It is worth placing on record that the Reform spokesperson’s comment that,

“everyone dies in the end”,

is a totally unacceptable and monstrous response to the building safety tragedy and emergency that we face.

The statutory instrument makes necessary technical corrections to the building safety regime. The Liberal Democrats support those changes, which will ensure that the system functions as intended. We must never let a tragedy like Grenfell happen again; all parties should agree on that. However, the SI sits within a wider framework that is still somewhat lacking. There remains a concerning mismatch between the Building Safety Act and the PAS 9980 fire safety standard. That mismatch risks leaving serious defects unaddressed and standards must be aligned to ensure that all building safety risks are properly identified and remediated.

We are also concerned that the building safety levy will not provide sufficient funding for remediation and to support the sector as a whole, particularly the social housing sector. Too many leaseholders therefore remain exposed to costs that they should not have to bear. The Government must ensure that all leaseholders are protected from remediation costs, not just leaseholders in buildings over 11 metres in height. Although we support the statutory instrument, much more needs to be done to ensure that the building safety system works effectively and delivers safe homes for all.

Women’s Safety in Rural Areas

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing this debate and making a powerful, well evidenced and entirely reasonable case for women and girls’ interests to be taken better into account in planning.

The violence against women and girls strategy, published in December 2025, describes planning and design as “critical tools” in women’s safety. Part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry, commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard, called for women’s safety to be embedded into the planning of public spaces, yet the updated national planning policy framework, published by the same Government in the same month, does not mention women or girls once—not in chapter 8 on safe communities, nor anywhere else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset and I wrote to the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Safeguarding Minister about that omission. When the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was asked, a spokesperson told The Guardian it was “unclear” why the two issues should be combined in any way. If the Government do not understand how women’s safety ties in with planning new spaces, we have a very serious problem.

The previous Conservative Government at least acknowledged that link when they consulted in 2022 on whether the NPPF should do more to keep women and girls safe. They did nothing about it, but they asked the question, which got it on the agenda. The Government appear to have one Department denying that a connection exists, while another Department explicitly acknowledges planning as a critical tool. That is unfortunately a case in point in the Government’s wider approach to communities and consultation. Rather than trusting local people to shape the places they live in, the direction of travel, whether by accident or by design—I look forward to the Minister telling me that this is not the direction of travel—seems to be towards centralisation and away from community voices.

There are several examples of that. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will see the Secretary of State removing decisions from local councillors on planning applications, in a move that I believe infantilises local councillors. A new direction, confirmed by the Ministry’s document published only yesterday, will prevent councillors from deciding on significant applications unless they first ask for the Minister’s permission. The Government have withdrawn funding for neighbourhood planning support services, the very mechanism through which communities can influence the design of their built environment.

The Government have also stripped much of the community and consultation policy out of the new draft national planning policy framework. The word “community” has been deleted no fewer than 35 times and the word “consultation” has been deleted 10 times. Without funding, most town and parish councils simply cannot review or update their plans. If gendered safety is not in the NPPF, overstretched local authorities cannot address it, because they are too underfunded to do anything that is not mandatory. These omissions from the NPPF do not only fail women at the national level; they give others licence to ignore the issue entirely.

In my constituency of Taunton and Wellington, parishioners in Kingston St Mary have raised with me the lack of pedestrian routes into Taunton. Walking along a narrow country road with no pavements is the only option, and women in the village find it unsafe. Cyclists too are affected. The parish council passed on one comment to me from a resident who said that cycling into Taunton should be easy, not life-threatening, on the Kingston Road. It is too dangerous to commute on a bike. The parish council also asked me particularly, unprompted by me, to raise the removal of funding for neighbourhood plans by this Government.

Walking along roads without footpaths is unsafe for everyone, but for women, especially after dark, it is not merely inconvenient; it restricts their freedom. Women in our communities deserve to enjoy the same confidence moving around our cities, towns and villages as anyone else. The local planning policy could and should be the mechanism to deliver that, consulting local communities to understand the priorities that need to be addressed. But communities need the policy backing and the tools and resources to make it happen, and the Government seem to be taking those away.

There are of course trade-offs that arise from design choices. Street lighting improves safety but contributes to light pollution. Green corridors are ecologically valuable but can create spaces that feel unsafe. Dense planting improves biodiversity but can reduce sight lines. Those are all trade-offs, but central Government overreach is not the answer. Local decision making informed by community nous is the answer. That would give women and others a say in the outcomes that matter in their local environments. Those are precisely what community-led planning is for.

Liberal Democrats call on the Government to amend the NPPF to explicitly require consideration for women’s and girls’ safety, particularly in chapter 8; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include clear guidance on designing for women’s safety; and to restore funding for neighbourhood plans so that communities have the means to implement the solutions that work best for them.

Community involvement matters, and planning has everything to do with women’s safety, whatever the quotes in The Guardian said. I hope the Minister will explain how community voices, particularly those of women, will be heard in planning.

Grenfell Tower Memorial (Expenditure) Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the 72 people who tragically lost their lives in the disaster nearly nine years ago. The Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill, and we support it. Nearly nine years since the fire, families and communities have waited long enough for a proper legal and financial footing to be provided for a permanent memorial to the 72 people who lost their lives.

As a chartered architect and a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, I began the new professional training and development that the Grenfell report now rightly requires of all architects. Tragically, previous fires had exposed the problems of highly flammable cladding, which shows that the risks were known. There were opportunities to act and attempts were made to act, yet 72 people lost their lives. The social homes at Grenfell were provided to serve the interests of diverse and often low-income residents, but they were refurbished —in part, to improve outward appearances—in ways that militated dangerously against those people’s interests. That context is worth stating, because it speaks to a pattern of big institutions and corporations not seeing or valuing the people they are supposed to serve.

On the question of justice, we need to be direct in pointing out that the Metropolitan police have said this week that prosecutions are not expected before 2027—10 years after the fire. All of us in this House must ensure that justice is done. That is one reason why the Liberal Democrats have called from these Benches for a new office of the whistleblower to create legal protections and promote greater public awareness of people’s rights. It is also why we have consistently supported the Government’s Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which will place a statutory duty of candour on public authorities and ensure equal legal representation for bereaved families. We are glad that the Government have committed to that legislation, and we will work on it—and on this Bill—with parties across the House so that its protections are delivered.

On cladding and fire safety, there has been genuine progress since 2017, and the Government deserve credit for accepting all 58 recommendations of the inquiry, but thousands of people are still living in buildings with unsafe cladding. Remediation is taking far too long, and that needs to change.

I would like to raise three key points before I conclude. First, will the Minister say something about the Grenfell projects fund, which has provided substantial support to the community since the fire? If it is being wound up, the Government should set out clearly what is going to replace it.

Secondly, now that the tower has begun to come down—and I completely understand why people have different views about and reactions to that—I welcome the Government’s announcement last week about saving elements of the structure, and support them in leaving any decision about how they may be retained for consultation with the Grenfell community.

Finally, we must all be vigilant in ensuring that all the recommendations are followed through, that the community is fully consulted on the memorial, and that the voices of those who raised concerns before the fire are—tragically, unlike those of the victims—at last properly heard and their concerns acted on. We owe it to the community to ensure that the commitments made to it since 2017 are kept, that buildings across the country are made safe and that the systems that failed are genuinely reformed. The voices that were not heard need to be heard and remembered into the future. Across this House, we should do what one reflection on the Grenfell memorial wall urges us all to do, which is to ensure that they not only rest in peace, but “rest in power”.

Power to Cancel Local Elections

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate you on securing quality, if not quantity, of speakers in this debate, Mr Mundell; it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for introducing the debate, and the 262 of my constituents who signed this petition. They are right: the Secretary of State’s power to cancel elections, certainly without recourse to Parliament, should be removed. The Liberal Democrats opposed cancelling the elections and are opposing top-down reorganisations of councils in various places. We opposed the cancelling of the elections at the time, including in Parliament. That is why we tabled a prayer motion in the House of Commons and a fatal motion in the House of Lords, which would have stopped the Government’s secondary legislation that cancelled the elections. Unfortunately, the Conservatives did not support the motion in the House of Lords, and therefore the cancellation went ahead.

The delaying of elections in certain local authorities meant that incumbent councillors were permitted to remain in post for longer than their elected period, which, as other hon. Members have said, directly contravened the democratic mandates given to them by voters. Simply moving the goalposts and silencing millions of voters is totally unacceptable and a subversion of the democratic process. The public deserve to know how such an obviously undemocratic plan was allowed to get so far. Even though the Government have said they will not provide it, the Liberal Democrats will repeat our call to see the full legal and other advice that the Government relied on, so that the public can see exactly how the plan came to fruition.

It is not just this Government. In May 2021, 5,000 councillor elections went ahead, but not the hundreds of elections that the Conservative Government cancelled in Cumbria, Carlisle, South Lakeland and Somerset because of unpopular, top-down reorganisations. What the Conservatives began this Government have continued, with an unwanted, top-down reorganisation of many council areas.

It was in not just Cumbria and Carlisle, but my own county of Somerset, where the Conservatives took it to extremes. The 2021 election delay to facilitate the unwanted Somerset-wide unitarisation was being discussed by Ministers with the then Conservative leader while the Conservatives’ previous merger of two Somerset district councils was barely a year old. The merged district council, which went on to become part of the new Somerset unitary council, has gone down as the shortest-lived local authority in history. Millions of pounds were wasted and the public will was ignored, just as it is far too often ignored now. In both Somerset mergers, calls for the previous Government to respect a referendum or poll of local people were ignored. Elections were delayed and the new super-large council emerged, covering 60 miles. About 20 towns and 400 villages were lashed together for Conservative convenience, even though the public voted clearly for two smaller unitary councils.

Now, just like then, local authorities have been grappling with the severe and additional pressures that the Government’s reorganisation is placing on their budgets. As a result, and because of Government flip-flopping and the lack of clear and prompt communication about whether local elections will go ahead, many are now scrambling to prepare for elections in just a few weeks’ time. They are staffed by electoral services officers, many of whose district council employers have been lined up for abolition. Does that not raise serious questions as to whether they will be able to deliver essential free and fair elections?

Given the Government have now reversed their decision to postpone the 2026 local elections, can the Minister confirm whether the same legal considerations applied to the nine local elections postponed in 2025? Does she believe that the postponement of the elections by the Conservative Government in 2021 was lawful or not? As the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said, the characteristic here is cancelling elections for unpopular, top-down reorganisations. Somerset will be lashed together with Dorset, Wiltshire and some other authorities to become Wessex. When I have visited flooded villages on the Somerset levels, nobody has come up to me and said, “What I really want is a metro mayor.” Unless we can bring back King Alfred, I suspect they are not going to back the idea at all. Will the Minister make clear what amount of taxpayer money is being spent on legal costs arising from proceedings related to the proposed postponement of local elections?

These are real questions that the Government need to answer. The Liberal Democrats, who oppose the cancelling of elections, will keep asking those questions. We have consistently stood against cancellations by the Conservatives and by this Government. We are clear that the decision to cancel should never have been taken, and democracy delayed is democracy denied.

Representation of the People Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate on such an important Bill that represents a long-overdue modernisation of our democratic framework, but the Government should be in no doubt that we Liberal Democrats will push them to go further, faster. For decades, my party has campaigned for young people’s voices to be properly recognised, so I am delighted to see the voting age finally lowered to 16. This change will enfranchise around 1.7 million 16 and 17-year-olds, giving them a say in decisions that shape their future.

Since becoming MP for Guildford, I have visited many schools across my constituency and spoken with young people whose thoughtful, informed questions make it abundantly clear that they are more than ready to participate in our democracy. While some may argue that 16 and 17-year-olds lack world awareness, I fundamentally disagree. With pre-registration from age 14, and with the right safeguards, we can build lifelong democratic habits and help close the participation gap.

We Liberal Democrats also welcome measures in the Bill that protect our democracy from the corrupting influence of dark money. The new “know your donor” requirements and tighter rules on corporate and unincorporated association donations are essential to prevent foreign interference and restore trust in how politics is funded. We will call for further important changes to strengthen the Bill in this area.

However, the Bill misses a vital opportunity to fix our broken electoral system. First past the post is unfair, outdated and increasingly indefensible.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that we need a radical reset of democracy in our country to reinvigorate trust, which has recently been lost? We need to cap big donations, bring in fair votes, and abolish the ludicrous voter ID scheme from the last Government.

[Zöe Franklin]

I wholeheartedly agree. I urge the Government to listen to the 60% of the public who want a fairer voting system, including members of their own party, and take very seriously the case for proportional representation.

I declare my interest as a member of the Speaker’s Conference on the security of MPs, candidates and elections, and I welcome the inclusion of our recommendations in the Bill. We live in a time when abuse and threats deter talented people, particularly those from under-represented backgrounds, from standing for public office. I am pleased that the Bill will better protect candidates and their families, but we must go further. We need to update section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 to explicitly criminalise the use of AI and deepfakes to smear candidates. Technology is moving rapidly, and those intent on undermining our democracy are moving with it, so we must future-proof this legislation.

Looking across this House, I can see that we have made real progress in reflecting the diversity of the communities that we serve, but there is still far to go. The Bill is an opportunity to enact section 106 of the Equality Act 2010, which requires political parties to publish diversity data. It has long been a Liberal Democrat commitment, and I pay tribute to organisations such as Centenary Action that have campaigned tirelessly for such transparency.

I urge the Government to reinstate the access to elected office fund in England, which was scrapped in 2020. The Bill claims to support disabled candidates, yet it offers no financial mechanism to make that a reality. Wales and Scotland already provide such support, so why not England?

Grenfell Tower Annual Report

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats’ thoughts, like those of everyone in the House, are primarily on the 72 tragic losses of life that occurred in the Grenfell disaster. I welcome the spirit of cross-party discussion that the Secretary of State and the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), have set out. I endorse the points made by the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell).

I welcome many of the recommendations and the actions being taken by the Government. In passing, I note that they apply to chartered architects. I have begun the training now required of all architects as a result of the Grenfell report—I declare an interest as a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects—which brings home, in a salutary way, the failure of the professions, successive Governments, industry and regulation on a tragic and horrendous scale.

One of the key recommendations in Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report, set out in the typically neutral language of a High Court judge, is a request for the Government to reconsider

“whether it is in the public interest for building control functions to be performed by those who have a commercial interest”.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick raised similar questions on the construction product testing system. The White Paper says:

“Unethical manufacturers were able to exploit systemic weaknesses with appalling consequences”.

The follow-up Morrell-Day report on construction product testing highlighted that there were conflicts of interest. The White Paper also mentions “virtually absent” enforcement. Those are all shocking parts of this tragedy.

My first question is therefore whether that decision has been taken. We would go further and say that commercial interests have no place in building control inspection and product testing. My second question—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I know that this is a very sensitive issue, but the hon. Member has two minutes and he is now over by 35 seconds. Timing is everything, so will he please ask his next question quickly?

[Gideon Amos]

I will, Madam Deputy Speaker. My second question is about those excluded from the building safety fund. Tens of thousands of families are in buildings under 11 metres or living with products that might last an hour in a fire under PAS 9980—that is the wrong standard. We need all highly flammable materials and all buildings that have fire safety risks to be remediated. I ask the Secretary of State to address that question.

[Steve Reed]

I thank the hon. Member for his questions and for his commitment, shared by the whole House, that we need to resolve the problems that led to the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. He asked about building control. We set up the independent panel under the chairmanship of Dame Judith Hackitt last year. That looks at decisions that may need to move into the public sector. The panel is due to report shortly, so I will not anticipate the findings that we can expect.

The hon. Member asked about the construction products White Paper, which was published today. I hope that he will take the opportunity to consider what it includes. I am sure that he will let me or the Minister for building safety know his thoughts on it. On remediation for buildings under 11 metres, it is important that we prioritise buildings based on safety risk, and that is what we are doing. We will of course keep that under review. There is a commitment to fund by exception those buildings under 11 metres where the risk is assessed to be high.

Local Government Reorganisation

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Liberal Democrats believe that all authorities in England should be enabled to have the devolution deal and local government arrangement that is right for them.

The shadow Secretary of State asked whether this was an isolated incident; in the context of top-down reorganisation, this definitely is not an isolated incident. Under the last Conservative Government, top-down reorganisation was forced on to areas such as Cumbria and Somerset; it was bitterly opposed by local areas, yet it was forced on to those local communities against local opposition. Cumbria county council took the Conservative Government to court, and Somerset councils opposed the forced reorganisation. When opinion polls were taken across Somerset and the wide conclusion was that two authorities would be better than one, the Government forced those decisions on to Somerset. My first question is therefore this: if polls are taken in areas subject to top-down reorganisation, will the results from the public be supported by the Government?

Secondly, the Liberal Democrats opposed the postponement of these elections. We put down a fatal motion in the House of Lords that could have stopped the postponement in the first place, which the Conservatives failed to support. Given that nine authorities had their elections postponed in 2025, does the advice and rationale that apply in 2026 apply to the postponement that happened in 2025? If not, why not?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that I am unable to discuss the detail of the legal advice, although he will know the decision that we took after considering that legal advice. His earlier point is absolutely right; we should all be motivated by the interests of local people. It is in the interests of local people that we should get rid of the confusion of having two councils in the same area, so that people know which council to contact, and that we should eliminate the wasteful duplication of jobs such as chief executives, finance directors and so on, so that we can spend the savings on improving the local services that make a difference to local people and the communities that they care about so much.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Many of the 5 million leaseholders were looking forward to being freed from the feudal leasehold system until they read the draft Bill, which left many disappointed. There is no restriction on the development value that leaseholders are going to be charged and no broadening of the mixed-use blocks that will be eligible for enfranchisement, while leaseholders will continue to pay the legal fees of landlords, and service charges are still not being capped. Given the commitments in the Labour manifesto and the King’s Speech to enact these recommendations from the Law Commission, should the Government not be more courageous, take on the landlords and give leaseholders proper rights to enfranchise, as they promised?

[Steve Reed]

I agree with the sentiment of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but unfortunately he has a number of his facts wrong; if he would like to put those details in a letter, I would be happy to respond and bring him up to speed. We are, for instance, seeking to end the practice of leaseholders being required to pay their landlords’ legal fees. This is the biggest reform of leasehold in a thousand years. I hope that the hon. Gentleman writes to me and, after I respond, that he will be able to give the reforms his full support.

[Gideon Amos]

The Law Commission reforms are being enacted and there is no date yet for a Bill to be brought forward. I hope that the Secretary of State will provide one.

Moving on to leaseholders who are still living with unsafe cladding and building defects, hundreds of thousands of people in buildings under 11 metres tall are living with cladding that is recognised as highly flammable, but are not eligible for the building safety fund. Is it not time that they were given the peace of mind and the safety they thought their home was providing them?

[Steve Reed]

We are supporting these situations on a case-by-case basis, but I would be more than happy to arrange a meeting for the hon. Gentleman with the Minister for Building Safety, if that would be helpful to him.

Local Government Finance

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

In our manifesto, the Liberal Democrats called for multi-year settlements for local government; for councils to be freed to generate more revenue, including by charging more council tax on second homes and from increased planning fees; and for an extra £2 billion on education, including for special educational needs and disabilities. It is right that funding for local government is rebuilt after the consequences of the 2008 crash and the famous letter left by the outgoing Labour Government that they had spent all the money and there was none left. The moves forward in the areas I have mentioned through this settlement are positive and we welcome them.

The announcement that 90% of SEND service debts that councils have unavoidably built up will be met by central Government also begins to address the crisis in SEND, but I am afraid it does not finish the job. The promised SEND reforms have again been delayed. Whatever the outcome of those SEND reforms, they must not be a precursor to weakening the protection disabled children rely on and their parents expect.

Our five tests for SEND reform would guarantee that children’s rights to SEND assessments and support are maintained, and that the voices of children and young people with SEND, and those of their families and carers, remain at the centre of the reform process. Secondly, capacity in state special school provision must be increased, alongside improvements to inclusive mainstream settings. Thirdly, national Government must top up funding for each child whose needs exceed local authority provision within a given cap. The Government must get on and introduce a cap on the profits made by private sector SEND companies. Fourthly, early intervention must be improved and waiting must be times cut. Lastly, schools must be incentivised to both accept SEND pupils and train their staff.

The additional funds for housing and homelessness, while small, are welcome, including those for Somerset council in my constituency. The extra funding through the recovery grant is also welcome, but places such as Kingston upon Hull tell us that it does not go far enough and will not fill the gaping hole in financial stability that persists. It is disappointing that social housing does not get a mention in the settlement. We need a new generation of council and social rented homes. Our plans are for 150,000 per year and Shelter’s are for 90,000 per year. Both would be a good proposition. The Government’s proposal for 18,000 per year just will not meet the level of need out there.

The additional funding, along with provision for SEND deficits, will help councils like mine in Somerset to keep the council tax rise to the 4.99% norm across the country. In a cost of living crisis, people cannot afford more than the minimum increase. That is something Somerset MPs and the council pushed hard for, and I am grateful to the Local Government Minister for meeting us and engaging with us on that. It is notable that 70 out of the 74 Liberal Democrat-led councils have kept the council tax rise to the norm minimum of 4.99%. The four that are, exceptionally, going above that all inherited from their previous Conservative administrations a social care funding time bomb.

Voters will take note that Reform-led Worcestershire county council is increasing council tax to the highest level allowed in the country. Typically, Reform Members are not here to take part in the debate on local government finance. The message is clear: vote Reform and pay more tax than anyone else in the country.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is giving a powerful speech outlining how Liberal Democrat councils up and down the country are doing their best in this cost of living crisis. Oxfordshire county council finds itself in a £24 million deficit as a result of the settlement. Meanwhile, residents on the doorstep are saying to us, “What about my potholes?” He is right to point out that social care is part of that demographic deficit. [Interruption.] Does he agree that we need to tackle the core issues and that one of those is social care, because sorting that out helps everything to do with local government finance?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Conservative Members ask, from a sedentary position, who runs the council, but I use the phrase “inherited time bomb” advisedly. The well-respected Conservative former leader of Somerset county council, Dave Fothergill, was one of the first in the country to identify this issue. He told “Panorama” back in 2019 that adult social care was a time bomb that was ticking. That time bomb has now gone off around the country, and council tax payers are having to bail out the broken social care system.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

For Torbay council, on which I still serve, incredible assumptions are being made about the levels of council tax being collected. That results in a deficit of £13 million in years 2 and 3 for a small unitary authority. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour party has been learning from the Conservatives, and is planning to balance the books of councils on the backs of local tax payers?

[Gideon Amos]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, who champions Torbay on a regular basis in the Chamber. Councils are suffering reductions in their funding settlements across the country, which is one of the reasons we cannot support the amount of support they are getting from central Government.

[Mr Betts]

There is again memory loss on the Lib Dem Benches. It was the coalition Government who made the biggest cuts to local government funding and started passing funding responsibilities over to the council tax system—that all began with the Lib Dems in the coalition Government. Why does the hon. Gentleman not apologise to the Chamber and to people up and down the country for what the Lib Dems did to them when they were in government?

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is right that massive savings were made after the financial crash in 2008—some would say around £40 billion over the coalition years. He would be horrified to learn that the only people suggesting cuts greater than £41 billion were those in the Labour party in their 2010 manifesto, which proposed £56 billion in cuts. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman does not believe me, he can look at the headlines of the time: “Alistair Darling: we will cut deeper than Margaret Thatcher”. That was Alistair Darling in his 2010 Budget. Who began austerity? Who began the cuts? It was the Labour Government, who were planning to go further, faster and deeper, according to Alistair Darling, than the Liberal Democrats or the coalition did.

[David Simmonds]

I just want to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he agrees with the Labour leader of Sheffield council, who says:

“Cost pressures continue to outstrip increases in funding, both specific inflationary pressures in major service areas, particularly for care, accommodation and construction, and the increasing volume of demand in housing and care.”

Is the Labour leader in Sheffield correct?

[Gideon Amos]

I hesitate to get too involved in the politics of Sheffield.

I am concerned that we are seeing reductions in Government funding for councils across the country, particularly in the case of rural authorities, which are especially hard hit by this settlement. Rural authorities find delivering social care and other services far more costly than in tightly drawn urban areas; Somerset’s 4,000-mile road network, for instance, is a massively more onerous proposition than a network in a tightly drawn urban area.

It is inexplicable that despite a consultation that considered maintaining the remoteness funding uplift across the country and across all funding heads of local government, it has been taken away from all funding heads apart from adult social care. Why would it be less costly to provide children’s services than adult’s services in a remote, rural area? Why would it be less costly to provide flood relief and flood protection than adult services in a rural area? A whole range of really remote authorities are affected, including Westmorland and Furness, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, all of which are particularly badly hit.

Remote authorities have much greater areas to protect from flooding. I have spent recent days with families in Stathe and Burrowbridge on the Somerset levels in my constituency, where I have seen how heartrending it is for families to watch the water coming closer and closer to their homes. Some people are going to bed with the water 200 metres away, but by the time they wake up the next morning and look out of their window, it is only 20 metres away. In some of the places I visited, the water is lapping up against the houses themselves.

When Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron came down in 2013-14—the last time we had severe flooding—he promised Somerset that money would be no object. It turned out that he meant that Somerset residents’ money would be no object, because Somerset’s new rivers authority became the only one in the country not to be funded by central Government and to have to rely on local taxpayers.

When the Flooding Minister, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), came down to Somerset yesterday, she said that Somerset will not be forgotten. I ask the Local Government Minister what extra support the Government are providing to Somerset council to deal with this flooding major incident, which could easily become a national emergency if effective measures are not taken now—and I mean in the next few days. Water levels are still rising, Minister.

Finally, we need an end to the massive expense of all this top-down reorganisation of local government where people do not want it. Forcing change on the structures of the natural communities that people know and love can only distract from the important work of reducing flooding, delivering care and all the other priorities that councils put first. No one I have met in Taunton and Wellington, in Somerset or on the levels has told me that what they really want to see is a metro-style mayor for their area coming down the road. Is spending almost half a billion on mayors really going to help any of our constituencies in the way that known, understood and strengthened local councils would?

While we welcome the limited extra funding, the settlement leaves too many questions unanswered on how SEND costs will be met. It is still going to lead to big cuts in services for rural and remote authorities, and on social care it leaves council tax payers bailing out a broken system. For all these reasons, we cannot at this stage support the settlement.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

I certainly do. My next point was going to be that deprivation is properly recognised in the funding settlement. The problem is that councils that have deprivation either across their area, or in part of it, have borne the burden of the cuts over many years. Under previous Governments, both coalition and Conservative, councils with the greatest need—which previously had the largest grants to reflect that need—faced the biggest cuts. This funding settlement gives the biggest increases to councils that faced the biggest cuts under the last Government; we are getting some restitution for the funding reductions that we suffered. The recovery grant is right, because councils need recovery when their funding base has been decimated, after grants that they needed were taken away from them. My one challenge to my hon. Friend the Minister is that the recovery grant lasts for three years, so there is a danger of a cliff edge in 2029, when those councils that now get it may suddenly lose it. The Minister is obviously trying to think ahead, which makes a change from previous Ministers, so let us start to think about that problem before it hits us.

I welcome the settlement for Sheffield. I think the comments made by the leader of the council—which is a cross-party council—were about the council’s concerns and the challenges it faced prior to this funding settlement. The finance director of Sheffield council has said that

“The figures announced in the LGFS back up the Government’s commitment to redressing the unequal cuts seen during the austerity years of the previous Government, and its aim to deliver more funding to deprived areas of the country.”

I think that is a fair statement from the officer responsible for the council’s finances. In this funding settlement, Sheffield has got about £55 billion more over three years than was anticipated under the previous proposals, which sort of fills the hole. In the past, we have been making cuts to essential services, but for the first time in 15 years, we can start a budget process without immediately looking at cuts to those services. Year after year of cuts—that has been the situation. Now, the budget can be balanced without those cuts, which is a fundamental change. We can start to look at some improvements and preventive measures for the future that will bring about the sort of change we all want. I say well done to the Government for getting us to that position.

I also say well done to the Government for dealing with the ringfences—not just in the Minister’s Department but across Government, whether they be in transport, health or education. There are ringfences all around that restrict local councillors’ ability to do the right thing for their communities, so it is good that the Government have moved in the right direction. The current Select Committee and previous Select Committees have called for that change, and the Government have listened. To be fair, when Michael Gove was Secretary of State, there was an agreement that this needed to happen, but not much evidence that it did happen. I think we have moved in the direction that everyone wanted us to take.

This settlement is a good start. It steadies the ship after the cuts that councils with higher levels of deprivation have had to suffer, and it brings in a strong element of fairness. Now, I am going to challenge the Minister—I know she would not expect me to be completely complimentary. I come back to the point that the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), made about the need for change. This is a good start, but there is a need for radical change. We came in with a manifesto of change; we have a large majority, and with willingness, we can deliver on it.

There are major issues in social care. I am still disappointed that we will not make changes to social care funding until 2029, after the review. I think we could make them more quickly. We are clearly moving on special educational needs and disabilities, but we need to move on children’s social care as well. There are things that some councils can do to help themselves; for example, Warrington council has started to build its own children’s home, so that it does not have to send children to very expensive private homes.

[Gideon Amos]

We may not agree on the cuts, which began in 2009, but the hon. Member has not yet touched on the removal of the remoteness uplift. Does he agree, in a cross-party spirit, that including a remoteness uplift just for adult social care, but not for children’s services or any other services, is contrary to common sense, and affects remote rural authorities more than others across the country?

[Mr Betts]

I will not go through every detail of this settlement. There is always a balance to be struck in local government settlements, and Ministers have to make their own judgments about that. It is the overall impact that I want to judge the settlement by. For me, this is a fairer settlement for those authorities with high levels of deprivation and some of the worst cuts in the years of austerity.

Commonhold and Leasehold Reform

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome the introduction of a commonhold framework, the abolition of leasehold for newbuild flats, and the end of forfeiture—all these are positive steps in the right direction. Our manifesto has been calling for an end to unfair residential leaseholds since Lloyd George called it “blackmail” in his 1909 People’s Budget. But while I welcome those measures, we should be going much further.

The Housing Secretary this morning called ground rents “money for nothing” and a “scam”, so why should leaseholders continue to pay £250 for nothing? The Government’s proposals need to go further. For freeholders trapped in the fleece-hold of unscrupulous property management companies, the blackmail of the great property rip-off is set to continue. There is nothing that will cap those charges in these proposals. Since residential leaseholds will still be with us for some time, millions of leaseholders need better protection from landlord costs being passed on to them. They need the capping of excessive service charges, like £400 to change a lightbulb and £4,000 to mow the grass. Help is also needed for those trapped in unsafe and defective buildings, hundreds of thousands of which are excluded from the building safety regime.

Will the Minister take forward Liberal Democrat proposals and immediately abolish residential leasehold charges, set ground rents at a peppercorn now, and regulate property and estate-management companies as recommended in the Best report, capping unreasonable service and estate management charges?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesman for those questions. He often mentions Lloyd George, and I share his passion for Lloyd George’s radicalism on property law and other measures. I will address the specific points that he raised. During the passage of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, I was clear that my instinctive preference when it comes to ground rents was for a peppercorn cap, fully eliminating ground rents. The changes that we are making ensure that, after 40 years, that change occurs.

Having considered all the analysis and advice available to me as a Minister, including the evidence gathered in response to the previous Administration’s 2023 consultation, I believe that we have set out the right policy. It is clear that an immediate peppercorn cap would carry significant risks, including some that might impact on leaseholders. The Government also recognise that there is a significant difference between regulating the creation of new leases, and intervening to affect existing contracts and investments.

On the functioning of the cap itself, I want to make clear that it is a maximum cash cap. If someone’s lease is below £250 and does not include escalating clauses, their ground rent will not rise to £250. If someone’s ground rent is over £250, at the point that the measures are brought into force they will see an immediate reduction. That will benefit millions of leaseholders across the country. It is a huge cost-of-living intervention, and I hope the House can get behind it as the most just and proportionate way of addressing unregulated and unaffordable ground rent terms.

The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) will know that we ran a consultation last year on how we can standardise service charges and increase their transparency to ensure that leaseholders can better challenge the reasonableness of service charges at tribunal. However, we do not intend to bring forward a cap, not least because doing so could harm leaseholders, particularly those in enfranchised buildings, who may need to raise sums beyond the cap to carry out essential maintenance works on their buildings.